DCE, 2yr Old Son, 4 Others Die in Car Accident

Mrs. Florence Bentie Yeyie, one of the handful of female District Chief Executives in the country, and her two-year old son were killed on Wednesday night at Suhum in a brutal motor-car accident that claimed four other lives.

All six bodies, including four females, have since been deposited at the Suhum Government Hospital, awaiting autopsy.

Meanwhile, the fatal accident has thrown the 50,000 population of the nodal town of Suhum into a state of mourning, bringing back to the people memories of the past decades when almost every month the town experienced a fatal accident.

It happened at the junction where the Suhum to Asamankese road crosses the Accra-Kumasi highway.

The time was 8:30pm and the number of vehicles that got entangled in the killer mishap were three.

Mrs. Yeyie, District Chief Executive for Sisala in the Upper West Region, her little boy and four other persons were heading down south in a pick-up vehicle numbered GV 609S, while a truck with the number GW 9891R loaded with rice was speeding towards Kumasi (northwards).

The third, also a truck, numbered AS 2978P was parked at the junction facing the Kumasi direction and full of fridges.

According to Salwyn B. Mettle, Eastern Regional Commander of the Police Service, almost when the one loaded with rice had come at par with the other truck, the latter suddenly entered the lane, obstructing the advancing truck.

Sensing danger, the first driver attempted to veer off the road to avert hitting the fridges truck.

The confused and confounded driver of the pick-up carrying the DCE stepped on the brakes and came to an abrupt stop on the road.

The police officer explained that, at this juncture, the rice-carrying truck ran into the other, went up momentarily and fell with a big bang on the tiny pick-up.

On the spot the six souls perished.

The driver of the vehicle containing the fridges, who apparently caused the whole problem, is reported to be in a rather critical condition at the hospital, while the other is being held by the police to assist in investigations.

Motor Traffic and Transport (MTTU) sources say since 1971 when the Accra to Kumasi road was re-constructed, at least 200 people have lost their lives at or near where Mrs. Yeyie and her colleagues met their untimely deaths.

Vehicles mangled or in other ways damaged beyond repair are, at least, a quarter of the number of the dead, while those who have been maimed or seriously injured exceed thousand.

From a 20-metre diametre roundabout, which was replaced by an ordinary junction, the spot has undergone scores of architectural re-designing, all with the view to ending the series of fatal accidents, few of them achieving the desired result though.

Recently, the Ghana Highways Authority built a series of rumble strips at either side of the junction on the Kumasi-Accra road.

For about two years, the strips seemed to have done the trick, barring accidents that broke only a few skulls or limbs occasionally. But this Wednesday's disaster seemed to have made mince-meat of the current technology.

When contacted, dismayed officials of the Highways Authority said a design to build a flyover at the Suhum junction had been on the drawing board for about three years now.

"We will have to revisit it soon in the circumstances," a director observed.